US President Donald Trump is seeking to loosen some Obama-era limits on drone attacks and ground raids outside conventional warzones US media reports have said.

The New York Times, citing unnamed officials, reported on Thursday that Trump’s top national security advisers have proposed relaxing two rules from the administration of Barack Obama, the former US president.

The officials said the targets of kill missions by the military and the CIA would be expanded to include foot-soldier fighters with no special skills or leadership roles.

The officials added that proposed drone attacks and raids would no longer undergo high-level vetting.

The New York Times report comes after NBC News published a story on Monday about the Trump administration contemplating policy changes that will further expand the CIA’s authority to conduct drone raids in a number of countries, both in and out of warzones.

NBC News cited officials at intelligence agencies, the Pentagon, Congress and the White House, who all requested anonymity to discuss the classified programme.

The international human rights organization Reprieve has found that since Trump took office in January this year, at least 30 civilians have been killed in ground raids and drone attacks in Yemen, where the US is not formally at war. That number includes women and children.

‘Foreign policy disaster’

The US military has admitted that civilians, including children, were probably killed in Yemen, in the first operation authorised by Trump.

In one week in March, the Trump administration conducted some 40 attacks in Yemen, including 25 on a single day.

The US government has also conducted drone attacks in Pakistan this year.

Maya Foa, director of Reprieve, called the new proposals a “foreign policy disaster”, which she believes would put more civilians lives at risk.

“The US has the right to defend itself against imminent attack, but as our recent investigation in Yemen shows, the drone programme has already moved far from that – selecting targets on the basis of shaky intelligence, and killing hundreds of people, including children,” she said in statement on Friday.

Foa added: “Loosening the already poor safeguards in place will cause more innocents to die, stoke the flames of extremism and do nothing to make Americans safer.”

During his term, Obama faced criticism for his dramatic escalation of drone raids in non-battlefield settings such as Pakistan, Yemen, Libya, and Somalia.

Analysts say Trump is already surpassing Obama’s record. According to Micah Zenko, an expert on drones at the Council on Foreign Relations, Obama’s administration conducted one attack every 5.4 days.

Trump has thus far averaged one attack or raid every 1.25 days.

Top photo | A Yemeni soldier looks at the graffiti of U.S. drone strike painted on a wall as a protest against the drone strikes, in Sanaa, Yemen, on Dec. 21, 2013. (Photo: Mohammed Mohammed/Xinhua)

Stories published in our Daily Digests section are chosen based on the interest of our readers. They are
republished from a number of sources, and are not produced by MintPress News. The views expressed in
these
articles are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect MintPress News editorial policy.

The recent devastating car bombing in Mogadishu has been blamed by Somali officials on the terrorist group al-Shabab. But the violence (and famine) that have beset Somalia have deeper roots — decades of imperialism and intervention, and use of Somalia as a staging grounds for the “war on terror.”

Buried among statistics on gun profits and lobbying efforts is the terrifying reality of just how unique America’s gun obsession and associated violence are. And the equally terrifying plan by the NRA to “normalize” gun possession in nearly every nook and cranny of American life.

U.S. campaigns for regime change characteristically focus on the “madness” of the “dictators” to be toppled. In the case of North Korea, the narrative is spiced by the country’s developing nuclear capabilities — which North Korea views as its main line of defense against . . . regime change.

Aung Su Kyi, the leader of Myanmar, has been accused of “legitimizing genocide” against the country’s Rohingya Muslims, despite being a Nobel Prize laureate. Her country’s military has massacred thousands of Rohingya, leading some to call for Kyi’s Nobel Prize to be revoked.